POVERTY REDUCTION OF COASTAL COMMUNITIES OF DISTRICT BADIN THROUGH INCLUSIVE AND INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT

DURATION

March 2013 to September 2016

LOCATION

District Badin, Sindh

FUNDING AGENCY

Welt Hunger Hilfe (WHH)

BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT / PROJECT AREA / NEEDS AND JUSTIFICATION

The selected District Badin is 1 out of 11 Districts which got badly hit by the floods in 2011 where the majority (65%) of the rural population which is 26% of Sindh’s 36-38 million citizens (1998 census), is engaged in agriculture and fishery. Sindh Province is severely threatened by raining and flooding due to riverine flooding and flash flooding caused by hill torrents from Baluchistan. In the last 60 years, floods occurred on a regular basis. Also, other natural and man-made disasters like draughts, epidemics, environmental degradation, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis make Sindh a Province at risk. Though the Province struggles to recover from the two floods in 2010 and 2011, Sindh also faces other needs and constraints. E.g. according to the Food Security Survey in Pakistan in 2009 (SDC, WFP, SDPI), the southern part of Sindh and its costal belt fall in the “extremely low access to food” group.

Badin District is low lying area, experienced the greatest loss in agriculture compared to the other flood affected areas in 2011. In Badin, on average over 80% of the farmers’ land was impacted. The highest loss of productive assets in the 2011 flood was reported in Badin District (Multi Sector Damage Need Assessment Flood 2011. WFP). In the Flood-Affected Nutrition Survey (FANS) for South Sindh, the Department of Health stated that acute malnutrition is at 21.2% and the child morbidity is at 42.8%. In Badin, 440,513 people face severe food insecurity (Multi Sector Damage Need Assessment Flood 2011. WFP). Therefore, flood affected communities struggle to meet their daily needs and are left highly vulnerable to any other man-made or natural disaster. Additionally, the local administration is not able to provide basic social services like livelihood opportunities, rehabilitation of social and public assets and infrastructure and is not aware how to address communities’ needs and constraints in an effective and efficient way.

The action will be contributing to the Millennium Development Goals (Result 01 – end of poverty and hunger), and the targets set by the Pakistani Government in its five year Medium-Term Development Framework and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The action will also coordinate with the Rural Support Program, Sindh Strategic Nutrition Response Plan and Provincial and District Disaster Management Authorities who drafted the Sindh Provincial Monsoon/Floods Contingency Plan in 2011.

Current involvement of communities to participate actively in development activities is not practiced by the local authorities. In the administrational system in the Sindh Province which is divided into 23 Districts, the District Deputy Commissioner (DC) is the decision maker. He or she addresses budget requests and allocations. On the Taluka level, an Assistant Commissioner (AC) has the authority to implement development activities and utilize a provided budget by the DC. On the UC level, a secretary who is a government employee works under the supervision of the AD Local government or AC. He or she has a small budget, but no authority to implement development activities. The lowest level in the District administration is the deh-level. Here, a chairman who is a non-governmental employee is elected by the village. DCO approves his or her election. The chairman’s function is to facilitate community needs, but has no budget and authorization. Also, the villages have very little influence on the DC’s decision regarding the budget allocation. . After the closure of the Nazim system in 2008, the political will at District level and among elected parliamentarians is missing to introduce systems for more participation at all levels. Based on the assumption that empowered communities can improve their social and economic situation, the action will enable them to play an active role in the design and implementation of development activities. At the same time, the action will strengthen the capacity of the local government and/or local administration to improve their capacity to deliver basic services through involving communities in a participatory way.

PFF has conducted two need assessments and one end of project evaluation (Attached Annex-1, 2 and 3). The results coming from these studies PFF has analyzed the basic needs of the communities. The fisher folk of the target area depend upon fishing and agriculture for their livelihoods. Unfortunately, the target fisher folk are facing a number of hurdles and problems in the way to earn livelihood. The target fisher folk fear food insecurity due to various reasons like:

Frequent Disasters.

No interest of Local Administration in the plight of coastal communities.

Community is organized but is unable to maintain any development projects on its own.

Environmental degradation of fishing grounds mostly because of draining as well as sugar waste into the fishing grounds and use of pesticides in the water bodies.

Shrinking of the areas/size of water bodies due to inadequate supply of fresh water; the adjacent land owners also use the fresh water of inland water bodies for the irrigation of their agricultural land specially destruction of Nareri Lake.

Improper implementation of license system; non fishers and non-license holders who are powerful people are involved in catching fish even with destructive fishing gears/methods significantly contributing in depletion of fish stock.

The involvement of womenfolk in fishing is restricted mostly because of involvement of non-fishers/outsiders.

Fishers do not have direct access to market, hence they are exploited by the middle men who are investors and purchase the catch from fishers on the least possible rates as compared to open market.

Government does not have sustainable fishing policy to address above issues because sustainable and pro small-scale fisheries is not on the priority agenda of the government.

The fundamental human rights of the target fisher folk are being violated.

Media and civil society (at national and international levels) are not sensitized enough about the issues of food insecurity and livelihoods of fisher folk.

Taking these aforementioned challenges into consideration, severe food insecurity of fisher folk of the proposed area threatens their wellbeing.

A need assessment of the areas has been conducted which reflected the above issues. Besides, PFF has strong presence in the target area in which PFF has a number of units. These units of fisher folk are comprised of members/volunteers of PFF having their elected representatives at unit, district and central levels. These representatives often share such problems with the leadership of PFF. Besides, an external evaluation of a very recently completed project in the target area also highlighted the above issues with certain recommendations. These recommendations are also being considered in this proposed project. That project named as “Just & Sustainable Livelihoods” was supported by Oxfam Novib (Netherlands). The pilot phase of that project was started in 2008 and completed it 2009. In the light of the recommendations of its final evaluation report and two other research studies on WATSAN and Health & Hygiene; its second phase was started in September 2009 and completed on August 30, 2012. The project was implemented in nine districts of Pakistan including Badin district. Main thematic areas of the project were Livelihood, organization and mobilization, WATSAN, Health & Hygiene and Advocacy with gender, HIV and human rights as its cross cutting themes. The final evaluation report of “Just & Sustainable Livelihoods” project is enclosed as an Annex. This is important to mention that the contract system on fresh water bodies has been abolished primarily with the support of that project.

The proposed project will address three main thematic areas: 1. organization & mobilization of fisher folk, 2. Sustainable livelihood and 3. Water rights & environment. First the target fisher folk will be mobilized and organized for the public/collective action; secondly the sustainable livelihoods will be addressed with two approaches-advocacy and lobbying for policy change and introducing some alternative livelihoods options and thirdly the advocacy & lobbying for water rights and environment. The capacity building trainings and gender mainstreaming will remain simultaneous interventions in each of the proposed themes.

PROJECT GOAL:

The social and economic situation of disaster affected communities in Badin is improved and sustained so that they become empowered and more resilient to disasters.

EXPECTED OUTCOME:

The community of 15 targeted villages have become more resilient to disasters with increased knowledge, access to government & fulfilling their immediate needs after restoring the source of livelihoods through an established and recognized 3-tier institutional system.

MAJOR OUTPUTS:

Community organized and trained and is able to plan for their own development at village level and advocating for further developmental needs from the government.

Details of beneficiaries identified for each program component are as follows:
Widows 5%: As of PFFs previous assessments of the area, there is normally a 5% of areas population who are widows (which are not able to support themselves).
Persons With Disabilities 2%As per the government quota and as the first stem by PFF in this regard we are putting 2% of the beneficiaries as this projects special beneficiary. PFF in connection with the UN convention on persons with disabilities and its ratification by Pakistan has made a formal decision to have at least 2% of the beneficiaries who must be PWDs in all of its projects. Appropriate ratio of male and female beneficiaries will be given after initial assessment and poverty ranking exercise.